I can write a washing-bill in Babylonic cuneiform, and tell you every detail of Caractacus's uniform

...in short, in matters vegetable, animal and mineral I am the very model of a modern Major-General, but I am having a bit of a time figuring out what the heck I'm supposed to do about changes to my health care plan. The website that is allegedly the answer to all my problems is raddled with broken links, and no one has really clearly spelled out in the glossy cardstock catalog that arrived to explain it all for me what the darned new program that I think I'm supposed to enroll in is even actually CALLED, so I'm kind of at a loss, here. While I am by no stretch of the imagination what anyone would call profoundly intelligent, I can follow instructions (and, you know...can read) and am fairly web-savvy. But this process takes me down blind alleyways and labyrinths that would make Borges weep with terror. Wha-?

There are plenty of stone morons out there. I know, because I tend to be standing in line behind them at the DMV (or any other place involving the filling-out of paperwork...remind me to tell you a less truncated version of the story of my last flu shot at an open clinic where I got in line behind Mr. and Mrs. "Remember the Maine" and their complete bumfuzzlement at the idea that they might need to reveal...or at the very least know...THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS if they wanted Medicare to pay for it...which of course they did, because why would they pay for it themselves because he's a veteran of the freaking battle of the Somme, or San Juan Hill, or possibly Agincourt, for all I could tell). And basically, I don't know how these people are getting by. I don't know how they pay their taxes, I don't know how they register their cars, and I now have added to this sad compendium another thing to wonder about. How on earth are these people, who cannot figure out that the express lane is for twelve items or less...that the tollbooth does not take pennies, despite the giant sign printed in five languages that says "NO PENNIES"...that one should not reach into the diamond cross-cut paper shredder while it is running...how are these people going to handle dealing with health insurance, which as it turns out, is actually hard to figure out? So here's what I'm saying: if the powers that be want people to choose lower-cost health care options, and get more involved in the administration of their health care, would it not be a good idea to make the brochure that tells you how to do it, you know, less complicated than a schematic diagram of flipping UNIVAC?

I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's

I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox

I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,

In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;

I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,

I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!

and yet, when it comes right down to it, I cannot really effectively say at the moment if I would be better off with preferred provider plan A or program 2008 B or the QHDHP with HSA. WTF. And let's not even get into the intricacies of the new prescription drug formulary, which requires three years of organic chem, a PDR and a consult from Elvis Presley to decipher.

But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

Next week: pondering the mysteries of the adminstration of NGO programs by the United Nations with a sing-along from the Mikado! He's the U-N-High-Comm-MISH-on-er!